Its 5am on December 6th and i was up wide awake, i wasn't awake because of excitment from the fact it was my birthday, i'm awake because its freezing outside, now that i was up i thought i could pass away some time updating my blog and decided that i would talk about yesterdays Assembly press release that I have just read
It includes info about domestic violence and the support thats available for victims if they become victim at this time of year when many people get merry and lose control when under the influence of drink,
i had touched on this subject earlier in my blog because in work i am a regional tesco union rep and as a group of tesco reps made up of one per tesco store, our group had discussed this issue and raised the statistics and issue with the regional store director, and asked tescos to give staff that suffer domestic violence better support, especially as one rep had been on the end of domestic violence and had required help to move home and store and required the help of a womens refuge to deal with the issue.
shortly after our meeting the issue was also on the agenda of the union annual conference in blackpool, which sadly i missed this year as it was being held on the same week as the county council elections, (where i had been a candidate), had it been a week earlier or later i would have been in the ADM and up on the platform supporting the issue about domestic violence and i welcome the assembly statement this week
0808 80 10 800 - First call for domestic abuse victims
The Assembly Government is this year raising the profile of a helpline aimed at dealing with domestic abuse over the Christmas and New Year period.
Evidence shows that instances of domestic abuse generally rise over Christmas and New Year.
While most of the country is celebrating there is a dedicated core of people on standby to help victims at any time, day or night. Their front line is the 24 hour free All Wales Domestic Abuse Telephone Helpline – 0808 80 10 800.
To help raise the profile of this important service, Labour’s Social Justice Minister Brian Gibbons is visiting a number of organisations and projects meeting workers and victims and reinforcing the message that domestic abuse of any level must not be tolerated in Wales.
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Anyway its now 5.30am on December 6th my birthday and i am wide awake as it is freezing in my house, my boiler keeps cutting off and pumps cold water around, the hot water for the bath works fine, i think i'll run a bath and jump in to warm up, i phoned a plumber yesterday and the earliest they can come out is next thursday, never mind these things are sent to test us?
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its now 7am
last night i quite enjoyed 
i had a few birthday drinks early, as a practise run for tonight night, my Amanda volunteered to drive, mainly because she's on antibiotics and couldn't drink, she's been bad for the last two weeks with tonsilitious,
The evening started with the annual father christmas parade organised by the pontarddulais and hendy carnival committee, (which i am a member of) we started off from the Hendy industrial estate, walking into the village green area, the local band were there and there was a fair crowd of families and school children, the local school done their traditional thing singing some carols,
There was a bonus this year there was a second trailer in a parade with youngsters on I managed to speak to Santa and told him I had been good all year 
Santa jumped on his sleigh and travelled into Pontarddulais to switch on their lights before retiring to his grotto in the St John's Hall where he met all the good children to ask them what they wanted for Christmas this year.
Once the parade left Bryngwili Road the local councillors and Alun Davies went up to the Fforest to switch on these lights, last year which had been the first year ever for a tree and lights up the Fforest had seen a disappointing turn out
So this year i had included the light switch on in my Labour Rose news letter and there was a better turn out as a result about twenty people in total turned up,
Residents living on the bronallt thanked me for advising them of the light turn out in the fforest, and i was asked about the new footpath that has recently been reopened following a diversion order.
If you didn't have a leaflet as some houses were left out i must apologies, i printed a 1100 and there's almost 1400 house and i run out of time and didn't get around to printing the second batch, some of squirrel walk were left out, fforest road, Talycoed and heol y morlais, i did do some of these streets but when i run out of leaflets in my bag, i never got around to walking back to finish off the streets, if you were one that i missed email me and i will drop a copy off because my news letter also covered your thoughts on recycling, i have had three phone calls already earlier this week asking when was i dropping leaflets off because residents had heard about the survey from other friends leave a comment on the blog or email me if you require the leaflet.
Early results from this survey came in use this week at the community council, on Wednesday the clerk read out a letter from the county council, which went along the lines that early feedback from residents across the county has highlighted the need for bottle banks and the county would like the community council to advice possible sites, obviously because of the survey i identified the two sites that had been suggested, after the plaid councillors racked their brains for a suggestion
on Thursday at Carmarthenshire County Council Plaid Councillors were playing politics at one of the scrutiny committees that i'm on,
The way scrutiny and the council works
there's full time officers employed by the council who run and manage the services and budgets of the county, then there's ten executive council board members who make decisions based on advice from the officers, this ten is made up of 7 independent members and 3 labour, once the executive make a decision on budgets and policy for the officers to follow,
the decision goes to a scrutiny panel made up from the back benchers, which is normaly 5 independent, 5 plaid and 2 labour members depending on the scrutiny committee, this panel of 12 councillors get a chance to scrutinise decisions and officers who run the county following the guidlines set by the Executive are present to answer any questions or to listen to any concerns, the scrutiny committee should then make recondations to the Executive board.
the assembly which is run by a coalition of plaid and labour is run on a very similar basis, anyway the assembly give councils money every year to run services and the assembly contributions are considerably greater than the individual council taxes that are paid by individual residents,
anyway each year the assembly is cutting their budgets of funding to county councils by around about 1% or 2%, which means county councils have to make efficiency savings or raise the council taxes,
plaid scrutiny members have made a stance that they will not scrutinise or recommend any efficiency savings in the budgets that the executive council board members have decided on,
which ultimately means they are not representing their constituents, because ultimately services need to cut or reformed to make these savings as assembly budgets are trimmed or council taxes have to be increased, because plaid won't play ball game to help identify efficiency savings,
one of the savings that was picked up on in thursdays housing scrutiny was bounced back to the executive board
the assembly were offering carmarthen a 1.9 million grant on the condition that the county matched this by providing 1.9million,
this money would be used as grants to help private house owners modernise their homes to modern homes, the exec board were recommending i think (i haven't got the document and finacial figures in front of me and there are lots of charts and figures to scrutise) it was £700k which meant they would be loosing 1.2 million from the assembly or a total of 2.4million for home improvements within the housing budget, the scrutiny decided to ask the executive board to reconsider the amount of money that they would be match funding for home improvements
because the assembly would remove any money that the county would not match fund and this grant goes out in the form of loans to residents which means it would eventually come back to the council as revenue when the loans are repaid, the scrutiny recomended the finacial officers and exec board looks at the budgets and look at other ways to save money and increase this cost cutting recomendation.
the scrutiny committee felt this cutback efficiency measure was short sighted by the executive board.
members of the county council are surprised and shocked that all plaid cymru members are refusing to scrutinise budgets and i am sure they will be the first to shout in the chambers if the council taxes have to be increased to raise revenue to allow the council to achieve all the services under their policies and business plans,
but when they do shout about decisions made will they be shouting that they refused to take part in the scrutinies which is where elected members get a chance to influence and to possibly make some changes, its to late to shout about changes at a later date.
i think i will end there i was going to talk about hendy pool committee which met on thursday night,
i'm freezing and i'm going to try and see if i can get my boiler and heating to work
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It's now 11.45am and the sun has risen and the house has warmed up, on Thursday evening after i had come home from an eye opening scrutiny meeting and from helping Nia Griffith MP with some leaflet dropping for her surgery on Friday night I attended the pool committee meeting in Arlan Gwili I felt the meeting went well and was rather constructive there were 7 members present
the following was decided
the group unaminoulsy decided to plan and take forward the issue about registering as a charity group, they agreed in principle because it was felt they needed to check if the current constition allowed them to do this, because a question was asked does this action need to be taken by the agm of the committee and nobody present knew the answer without checking the constitution,
however all 7 people present agreed a charity group might be able to access more money from funds and grants that the county council might not be able to access,
owen jones the clerk to the council has spoken to various committee members and emailed/written to the committee on a number of occassions offering to draft up the application as a registered charity, this subject has been discussed and debated since i believe 2005 on numerous occassions, it was decided that the committee members on the community council, discusses with owen this possibility sometime between now and the next community council meeting and that this topic be recorded in the minutes of the evennigs meeting and given to all known pool committee members still active and interested in the pool and parks committee and placed on the agenda of the next meeting to be held tuesday 13th january,
because there has been as many as 30 people attending the agm's of the pool committee but there's only a hard core of about 12 regular volunteers who attend monthly meeting, this is because the priorities of the pool committee have been changing and the commitee members have been dwindling as a result
the constitition was orginally set up when it was a volunteer group running the pool, then when the pool was closed it became a campaign committee to try and get the county to reopen the pool, and now that the pool campaign has been accepted as lost, the committee's roll will have again changed, the group were unaminous at last nights meeting and the octobers meeting that at this point they would not enter any agreement to lease the park and the roll of the committee would be a fund raising committee with the objectives to see improved youth lesuire and sports facilities in the park and village of the hendy in general, the group would also welcome new volunteers in this new challenge.
one of the new community councillors alan evans volunteered to look at the current constition and possibly look at suggestions on how to update and modernise the constition and the mission statement and would report back to the community council and the next pool meeting
it was also agreed that between now and the next meeting in january that members of the committee should possibly try and meet with Eirian James the county officer who has kindly drawn a plan of the park with various items like the splash park and multi use games area, it was generally agreed in principle that a space be allowed for a community building of some sort, we accepted that this might never happen, but the 2001 foothold survey and the 2008 feasibilty study and letters of response supporting the feasibility study for the park and a similar feasibility study for the Urdd conducted in 2007 all clearly identify there is a need for improved facilities in the village
It was agreed the park could be a place that this might be developed in the future, if space is not worked into the master plan it would be difficult once the park is developed to place a community buiding if all the space is utalised. The committee wanted to find out if Eirian could find time before january's meeting to meet with members of the committee at the park or in his office to alter the plan.
looking at the draft drawing there was a comment made would the skate park that had been added along side the multi use/astra pitch be appropiate, it was decided that we would like the youth workers opinions on this and views from some of the youth that they have been engaging over the last 13 months, would kevin and chris of the youth service be available to meet us before january 13th or could one of you come to the next meeting.
finally there's still an issue about how the river bank is going to be made safe especially considering this is a public area where people can go walking in the park, i understand work needs to be discussed with the enviroment agency / river authorities about the bank errosion and flood risks zones etc,
Huw Jones of the community council is making preliminary enquiries to help find some of these answers out for the pool committee and comunity council.
The next meeting of the pool committee would be Tuesday 13th January.
The diagram below is purely a first draw thought of what might go into the park, it is by no means the final plan
and below is a photo from one of the catalogues that i've recieved showing splash parks there's also more info and photos in earlier entries of this blog
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